head to head · open source
Ghost vs jekyll
Ghost has 55,339 GitHub stars, 11,975 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jekyll has 51,677 stars, 10,300 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ghost leads on adoption by 7% (55,339 vs 51,677 stars). Ghost is written in TypeScript under MIT; jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT. Ghost has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, jekyll 20%. Ghost was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Ghost | jekyll | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 55K | ★ 52K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 10K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ghost if
- You weight community size — 55K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick jekyll if
- You want the jekyll feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and jekyll fits your workflow better
About Ghost
Ghost is an open source publishing platform built in Node.js and TypeScript, designed for blogs, newsletters, and membership based content sites. It runs as a self hosted web application and also powers Ghost(Pro), a managed service where all revenue supports the Ghost Foundation. The project lives in the JavaScript/Node.js ecosystem and is licensed under MIT.
read the full Ghost overview →
About jekyll
Jekyll is a blog aware static site generator written in Ruby and released under the MIT license. It takes content written in Markdown together with Liquid templates and renders a complete static website that can be served by Apache, Nginx, or any other web server. The project describes itself as a file based CMS without the complexity of a database backed one, and it is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which hosts sites directly from GitHub repositories. It lives in the Ruby ecosystem, is distributed as a gem, and has been developed for roughly eighteen years.
read the full jekyll overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ghost or jekyll more popular?
Ghost has 55,339 GitHub stars and jekyll has 51,677. Ghost has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ghost and jekyll free?
Both are open source. Ghost is licensed under MIT and jekyll under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ghost and jekyll?
Ghost is written in TypeScript and jekyll in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ghost or jekyll?
Choose Ghost if you want the larger community (55,339 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose jekyll if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.